She hung her head, and answered in a tone so low that I could hardly catch the words—
“No, I am unworthy, Gilbert. I deceived you.”
“The past is past, and all forgotten,” I exclaimed, snatching up her hand, and bending until my hot, passionate lips touched hers. “You are mine, Mabel—mine alone!” I cried. “That is, of course, if you dare to trust your future in my hands.”
“Dare!” she echoed, smiling through the tears which filled her eyes. “Have I not trusted you these past five years? Have you not indeed been always my best friend, from that night when we first met until this moment?”
“But have you sufficient regard for me, dearest?” I asked, deeply touched by her words. “I mean, do you love me?”
“I do, Gilbert,” she faltered, with eyes downcast in modesty. “I have loved no man except yourself.”
Then I clasped her to me, and in those moments of my new-born ecstasy I repeated to my love the oft-told tale—the tale that every man the world over tells the woman before whom he bows in adoration.
And what more need I say? A delicious sense of possession thrilled my heart. She was mine! mine for ever! I was convinced that in those terrible sufferings through which she had passed, she had been always loyal and true to me. She had, poor girl, like her father, been the innocent victim of the ingenious adventurer, Dawson, and the unscrupulous young blackguard who was his tool, and who had inveigled her into marriage in order to subsequently possess themselves of the whole of Blair’s gigantic fortune.
The wheel of fortune, however, ran back upon them, and instead of success their own avarice and ingenuity resulted in their defeat, and at the same time placed me in the position they had intended to occupy.